Yahoo News "I don't know if he had beef": Man 'who was with missing Jay Slater at Tenerife Airbnb' addresses 'problems' amid claims teen 'had taken £12,000 Rolex'
A British man who 'was at the Airbnb where Jay Slater visited' before he went missing has said there 'were no problems' before he left - amid claims the teenager 'had taken a £12,000 Rolex watch'.
Ayub Qassim has claimed he 'did Jay a favour' by letting him stay at the Airbnb property he had rented close to the village of Masca in Tenerife. The pair had travelled there with another friend in the early hours of the morning on June 17 after going to a rave on the south of the island.
Jay, from Lancashire, left the property later that morning and has been missing on the island ever since. Yesterday Mark Williams-Thomas, a former British police detective who is helping Jay's family in Tenerife, claimed that the teenager had told his pals he had 'taken a £12,000 Rolex' and had posted a Snapchat about the watch.
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"We've been unable to validate this in terms of a reported theft", he said in the video. "However, friends of Jay said he would not make this up and the watch was subject of later conversation between the friends."
The investigator also claimed the teenager was 'scared' when he left the Airbnb. But Qassim said that as far as he knew, 'there had been no problems'.
Speaking to the Mail Online, he said: "If I'd fallen out with him would he even come to mine? There were no problems.
"You've seen the last images of him with his red blanket around him. I don't know if he had beef elsewhere because I don't know him that well, I only know him through friends."
According to reports, Qassim was jailed nine years ago for being the mastermind behind a sophisticated operation to flood Wales with Class A drugs. Spanish Police have already spoken to him and the unnamed pal he was travelling with - though officers on the ground said the pair were 'irrelevant' to the investigation.
Earlier reports suggested that officers were probing claims of a nightclub scuffle over a stolen Rolex in the hours before Jay vanished. It was claimed that a fight had broken out outside Papagayo Beach Club - where Jay was pictured partying - involving a man who said his Rolex watch had been stolen.
Shortly after, police in Tenerife were reportedly investigating a new lead linked to Jay's disappearance. At the time, it was not clear how the incident could be linked to Jay's case, but one friend suggested he could've gone to look for the watch.
Following the claims, police reportedly turned their attention to CCTV and security camera footage of where the alleged scuffle took place, according to MailOnline. Mr Williams-Thomas has alleged that Jay was scared when he left the holiday rental where he was last seen, adding the teenager couldn't go back to the property, despite this being the most 'sensible course of action'.
It is unclear where the alleged stolen Rolex was at this time. The ex-cop said: "We have received information that would suggest Jay left the rental property feeling scared and that he would not return to the rental, even though that would have been the most sensible course of action, and also where he could have charged his phone and got water."
Qassim, who has since returned home to east London, said that Jay 'came to the Airbnb alive and left alive'. "I let the geezer stay at mine because he had nowhere else to go, his friends had all left him", he said.
"I know Jay, through friends, I'm not going to bring someone back to mine if I don't know them.
"I'm doing the geezer a favour and now my face is all over the news. It's a bit mental. I haven't even done anything."
The teenager, who was on holiday with his pals Lucy Law, 18, and Brad Hargreaves, 19, had previously been partying at in Playa de las Americas, before leaving the event to go back to the rented property. His last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the Canary Island – which was about an 11-hour walk back to his accommodation.
At around 8.30am on the morning of his disappearance, Jay called Lucy to say he was in the middle of nowhere, trying to get home with no water and 1 per cent on his phone battery. That was the last time anyone heard from him.
After almost two weeks of hunting for the teenager in vast and mountainous terrain, police called off the search on the ground for him. On June 30, they said officers would continue to act on any tip-offs or other information that came in but the active work that has been ongoing since the apprentice bricklayer was reported missing would cease.
